The Voting Rights Act and the Era of Maintenance

Abstract

Since its initial passage in 1965, the Voting Rights Act has seen two distinct Eras of enforcement that have been relatively well-recognized in the literature - the Era of Participation, during which the bald-faced denial of access to voting booths for minority voters was virtually eliminated, and the Era of Descriptive Representation, during which minority voters were able to integrate legislative bodies by electing candidates who shared their same immutable characteristics. This Article contends that we have entered a third Era of Voting Rights Act enforcement - the Era of Maintenance. After identifying and laying the parameters of the Era of Maintenance the Article then tackles the question of whether the Era represents an appropriate approach to the Voting Rights Act going forward.

Keywords: civil rights, Voting Rights Act, democracy, voting rights, Section 2, Section 5, Section 203, politics, racial gerrymandering, discrimination